Role models’ influence on student interest in and awareness of career opportunities in life sciences

ABSTRACT

The call to increase student interest in science and related careers continues to receive national attention in the United States. While many current efforts have focused on infrastructure support and innovative pedagogies to better reach and engage students, research suggests that having a career role model can influence adolescents’ interest in and choices of science courses and career pathways. This exploratory study investigated the impact of a week-long online biotechnology program called Biotech in Action (BIA) that featured career role modeling and authentic science learning. Students were engaged in career modeling sessions with multiple professionals working in related STEM fields while learning life sciences within authentic biotechnology research contexts. In total, over 400 high school students participated in BIA. The results showed that students felt they developed a better understanding of the biotechnology field and became more cognizant about steps to achieve their future career goals after BIA. Many students reported that the interactions with career role models and learning about their educational and professional pathways helped demystify science career fields. Overall, this research provides new insights to curriculum designers and researchers on integrating career role modeling and authentic learning to spark and sustain student interest in science.

KEYWORDS:

• Career role modeling
• life sciences education
• authentic learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval

The work presented in this paper was approved by MIT’s Internal review Board, Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects (COUHES) under approval no. 2005000166.

Informed consent to participate and publish

All participants signed an assent form to participate in the study, which indicated that we will be collecting their survey and BIA activity data. Since participants were minors, all participants’ parents provided written consent prior to enrollment in the study. Students were told that they can withdraw from the study at any point, and they may choose to turn off their audio and video if they preferred.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Lemelson Foundation: 21-01968.